While our supreme leader is accepting inconsequential awards in Nigeria and Guyana (Do you even know where they are? Clue: they are nowhere near Manipur) and hugging war criminals and their accomplices in Rio de Janeiro, his own capital is invisible from outer space, or from my balcony, blanketed in a toxic cocktail of dust, poisonous gases, particulate matter 2.5, carbon dioxide (CO2) and God only knows what else; as I write this, it’s been six days and counting. Air quality index levels have crossed 1,000 (more than 20 times safe levels as prescribed by the WHO), according to official reports. North India has been officially declared the most polluted region in the world. Two million Indians die of pollution every year (one-fourth of the global figure) according to the World Health Organization, but when was the last time you heard either this demi-god or his environment minister or any other leader of any consequence talk about the environment?
I wouldn’t want to bore the reader with oft repeated statistics, but some figures are necessary to grasp what a waste of time the usual trope of blame-gaming – Aam Aadmi Party vs Bharatiya Janata Party vs Congress vs Yogendra Yadav vs all – is. And that this is not just about the privileged and spoilt brats of Delhi but about the whole country. All of us treat the natural environment like a piece of toilet paper – use it to serve our basest needs and just throw it away (incidentally, did you know that 28,000 trees are cut everyday for manufacturing toilet paper?). Consider some figures, if you can spare the time between your Muslim bashing, bridge game, gym workout, the Swiggy delivery or kitty party.
The country has lost 2.33 million hectares of tree cover since 2000 to so-called development projects (Global Forest Watch). One hectare of moderately dense forest can capture 147 tonnes of CO2 – if our environment minister can do the simple maths, that means we have lost about 300 million tonnes of carbon sequestration capacity per annum; one-third of what we had promised to add in the last conference of the parties on climate change. And this does not even factor in the other benefits of forests – ecological services, water retention, dust and sound barriers, and preservation of biodiversity. In addition, between 2015 and 2021, 3.13 million hectares of forests have been degraded from dense to open/scrub and 9.4 million trees have been felled for mining, road construction and power projects. In Delhi, 77,000 trees have been cut between 2019 and 2021. The lieutenant governor of Delhi himself (he who is accountable to no one, not even his conscience, since that has been kept in hock in 7, Lok Kalyan Marg) is being investigated by the Supreme Court in a case of irregular felling of 1100 trees in Delhi’s southern Ridge area. India has 28 trees per capita against a global average of 422.
This environmental slaughter is an ongoing and continuous process under the benign gaze of the judiciary, the National Green Tribunal, the World Bank, the IMF and the expanding roster of home-made billionaires. Approval has been given for felling 8,00,000 trees in the Andamans and 1,20,000 in the Hasdeo forests, in the face of protests by tribals. 60,000 trees have been cut for a wholly unnecessary road for Mr Adityanath’s favourite kanwariyas. Even Shimla, which now has more advisors to the chief minister than it has deodar trees, proposes to fell a few hundred trees to make fly-overs! I will not even talk about the Western Ghats, the horrendous Char Dham Highway and the wholly unnecessary four-laning madness that has gripped the Himachal government. Every single river has been poisoned beyond acceptable levels of drinking or even farming. Most of our wildlife and biodiversity are on the verge of extinction, never mind the figures cooked up by the Forest Research Institute, Project Tiger Authority or the Zoological Survey of India on their post-retirement microwaves. Why should we spare the air, when we are decimating ever other element of nature?
Environmental regulations that provide some limited protection to the environment even in a chronically corrupt country like ours are being relaxed on an almost daily basis to favour some crony or the other. The 10% upper classes, who contribute 90% of the pollution and degradation, are not bothered; they can insulate themselves with their air conditioners and air purifiers, or jet off (like our prime minister) to exotic locales and count their fixed deposits there. Those who stay back to keep an eye on their fixed deposits here will suggest that a lockdown should be imposed immediately – an absurd, elitist idea which will hit the most vulnerable most, just as they are recovering after the terrible effects of the COVID-19 lockdown. The environment and ecology are never election issues, no political party ever espouses them, no manifesto so much as mentions them even in passing, and you and I never demand this. By the time we are done with issues relating to electronic voting machines, caste reservations, free water, electricity and rations, “ghuspaitias,” Rohingyas and demolishing of mosques, we have time and energy left only for discussing Salman Khan’s latest film or Kangana Ranaut’s most recent demo of her profound knowledge of history.
It is no coincidence that India has been ranked 176 out of 180 countries in the Global Nature Conservation Index in October 2024, one of the five worst-performing countries in the world. So why should we be surprised at Delhi adorning this mantle of honour every year? And why should we be blaming an incompetent and environmentally illiterate government for it, considering that we ourselves don’t give a s**t about the environment?
Still surprised that we have this 3 trillion dollar economy smog over the Indo-Gangetic plains that has already knocked seven years off your lives, according to health experts? Don’t be, for all this devastation is in pursuit of the holy grail of the 35 trillion dollar economy by 2050. Except that the smog will have killed us all by then, or rendered us comatose (if today’s politics has not already done so).
So take a deep breath of the patriotic, made-in-India fumes and, while exhaling, chant loudly: Hum Hindu Khatre Me Hain.
You will never say a truer word in your life – or what remains of it – after the smog has lifted.
